When it emerged that the National Trust had put vegan scones on the menu, it was seized on by some newspapers as a marmalade dropper – or strawberry jam dropper, perhaps – proof that the institution was woke. Wait until they hear about all the queer men and women who helped to make the Trust what it is today. The charity’s 5.4 million members and others visit its grand piles for a nice day out and a tea towel, unaware that they are surrounded by the ghosts of these figures. They are brought to life by Michael Hall, a former architecture editorof Country Life and author of books on Waddesdon Manor and the gothic revival in Britain.

Some of them, such as the buttoned-up Henry James, who lived at Lamb House, Rye, merely lent their lustre to properties that were later taken over by the trust. Others introduced features to the estates that continue to delight trippers to this day. They include Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, partners in a lavender marriage, who created the gardens at Sissinghurst, appropriately enough.

The National Trust was established in 1895, the year Oscar Wilde stood trial for gross indecency. Hall recreates the suffocating, hypocritical atmosphere of late 19th-century England; of London, in particular. But did hard-pressed queer Victorians create the National Trust? Not exactly. It’s true that one of its founders, Octavia Hill, lived with a woman. However, Wilde himself “had no direct link to the organisation” and one of Hill’s co-founders was a puritan who spent his declining years trying to stamp out saucy seaside postcards.

All the same, A Queer Inheritance tells a deeply researched and revealing story of our national life centred on a range of deceptively cosy settings. Hall suggests that Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray may have been inspired by outrageous goings-on at Clumber, the seat of the Duke of Newcastle, which is now in National Trust hands. EM Forster lived at Piney Copse in Surrey, also in the trust portfolio. He indulged in reveries about “the greenwood”, the semi-mythical woodlands of old Albion with revivifying powers, but also the habitat of Pan, master of pagan revels.

After the war, many country houses were passed to the trust because of dwindling returns from their estates and steepling inheritance tax. In their vast unheated rookeries, aristocrat’s fingers were turning the same colour as their noble blood. Architectural historian James Lees-Milne, whose diaries are a waspish insider account of the trust, had the job of tapping up the toffs to hand over their title deeds in return for staying on, rent free. He also dealt with what he called an almost “extinct generation of bien, high-to-middlebrow bachelors, endowed with money, privilege and nice houses and possessions; queers with an Edwardian sense of the proprieties, snobbish yet full of confidence”. Hall tells us the comic, sad stories of some of these squires, with their galleries of unabashed etchings and what Lees-Milne calls their “too immaculate blue suits”.

At times, the author is like one of the peelers of old London town, finding queer behaviour everywhere. The Arts and Crafts movement was characterised by “gruff male diffidence … [which] often concealed deeper longings; one of their most distinctive forms of furniture was the closet”. Two young men who passed as society beauties were clearly cross-dressers, but Hall speculates that they may have been trans. For a writer who appears to feel the sexual injustices of the past keenly, he makes little of the interest of some well-connected gentlemen in the company of boys. And while he strikes a retrospective blow on behalf of queer people, the elegant establishment pillars of the trust don’t so much as wobble. We only hear about the better class of gay and lesbian. This version of Downton Abbey doesn’t concern itself with life below stairs.

I make no apology for returning to the delicious scone served by the trust. Like the institution itself, it’s familiar and comforting but not free of complexity. Is it jam first, or cream? “S’gone” or “scoone”? Perhaps this is another case – like histories gay or straight – where there is more to the story than a simple binary suggests.

Details of Charles Darwin’s vast personal library, from a paper on epileptic guinea pigs to the Elizabeth Gaskell novel he adored, are being published in their entirety for the first time.

The project has involved nearly two decades of painstaking, detective-like work to track down the thousands of books, journals, pamphlets and articles in the naturalist’s library.

John van Wyhe, the academic who has led the “overwhelming” endeavour, said it showed the extraordinary extent of Darwin’s research into the work of others.

“It also shows how insanely eclectic Darwin was,” Van Wyhe said. “There is this vast sea of things which might be an American or German news clipping about a duck or invasive grasshoppers. That’s been the fun part, not the formal books but the other things … all of which pool together to make the theories and publications we all know.”

The 300-page catalogue published by Darwin Online details 7,400 titles across 13,000 items including journals, pamphlets and reviews.

Some of the books date back to Darwin’s school days such as Oliver Goldsmith’s A history of England (1821), which he won as a prize, or his headmaster’s textbook on ancient geography.

Researchers have at times used auction records to piece together stories.

For example, an auction sales record reveals that Darwin had a copy of an 1826 article by the ornithologist John James Audubon, “Account of the habits of the Turkey Buzzard (Vultura aura), particularly with the view of exploding the opinion generally entertained of its extraordinary power of smelling”.

In 2019, a copy of Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1880 novel Wives and Daughters appeared at auction. A note in it records: “This book was a great favourite of Charles Darwin’s and the last book to be read aloud to him.”

Previous lists of what was in Darwin’s library only covered around 15% what was actually in it, said van Wyhe.

The new list shows Darwin had volumes on a dizzying array of subjects including biology, geology, philosophy, psychology, religion, farming, art, history and travel.

More than half the works are in English and the rest in languages including German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Danish.

One of the items is a German periodical containing the first known photograph of bacteria.

Other papers in the library have titles such as “The anatomy of a four-legged chicken”, “Epileptic guinea-pigs” and “The hateful or Colorado grasshopper”.

The project includes a virtual reconstruction of the library, with 9,300 links to copies of works available for free.

No one, his supporters say, has influenced our knowledge of the natural world more than Darwin.

His 1859 masterwork, On the Origin of Species, set down the theory that explains how life on Earth has evolved. It is seen as a book that changed the world, one that mattered then and matters now.

Van Wyhe, a historian of science at the University of Singapore and the director of Darwin Online, said it all showed that Darwin was “not an isolated figure working alone but an expert of his time building on the sophisticated science and studies and other knowledge of thousands of people.

“The size and range of works in the library makes manifest the extraordinary extent of Darwin’s research into the work of others.”

The library publication coincides with what would have been Darwin’s 215th birthday on 12 February.

Reams of material has been written about Darwin but this is the first time his library has been itemised in its entirety.

Van Wyhe said: “Now that we’ve done this I wonder ‘why wasn’t this done many years ago’? Darwin is someone who has been written about more than most historical figures… there are jokes about it, we call it the Darwin industry.”

The imagination of Bram Stoker gave life to one of literature’s most enduring terrors, Count Dracula. But the Irish-born writer’s mind was not only full of flapping cloaks, dripping fangs and creaking coffins. Stoker, it can now be confirmed, also had a strong vein, or shall we say streak, of bureaucratic efficiency running through his personality.

Researchers working for the Actors’ Benevolent Fund, the charity that supports actors and stage managers in need, have discovered that the minutes of its founding meeting, back in 1882, were taken by Stoker. It has now been confirmed that the handwriting matches documents held by the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, with images of the notes released this weekend.

Although Stoker is now established as a writer of world renown, before he published Dracula in 1897 he was employed as a personal secretary to the founder of the fund, the actor Sir Henry Irving. Moving to London, Stoker was also later to take up the role of business manager of the Lyceum theatre, a job he stayed in for 27 years.

Comparisons with the famous author’s certified manuscripts were made after the charity’s archivist, Natasha Luck, had followed up on a hunch. “I vividly recall the thrill of finding his name in records from 1882,” she told the Observer. “When I had catalogued the charity’s earliest minutes, I noted Stoker’s stint as a temporary secretary for the Actors’ Benevolent Fund in its early days and wondered … were some of these crucial minutes actually penned by him?”

Luck had mentioned her theory to a colleague working at the university collection. “With her help the mystery was solved – she photographed a sample of the minutes and compared them with confirmed examples of Bram Stoker’s handwriting in the university’s theatre archives. What a delight to be told they were indeed a match!”

Alison Wyman, chief executive of the charity, said her reaction to the finding was pure excitement. To think, she said, that the launch of the fund was witnessed by “the creator of probably one of the most iconic characters in fiction, who of course has appeared in multiple adaptations across TV, theatre and film played by so many talented actors.”

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The fund still supports professionals who fall on hard times. “We have a rich history, going back 140 years, and we always want to celebrate that while at the same time continuing the work,” Wyman said. “We hope this incredible find will shine a light on the importance of the acting community and how crucial it is to support them.”