MCINTOSH, Neil Scott Wishart CBE 1947-2026
Richard R
He m first 1971 the LP Baroness MCINTOSH OF HUDNALL b 1946, and had a son and a dau as below. He m second 1991 reg Q3 Glos, Melinda Jane Frances LETTS OBE b 1956 (Who’s Who), and had a further son and a dau as below.
Obit in the Times of 25 Feb 2026
E X T R A C T
Neil McIntosh obituary: director of Shelter
Pioneer of ‘third-way’ education reforms and chair of the campaign for freedom of information dies aged 78
“He was very compelling and persuasive, extremely charming and charismatic. He would rigorously challenge people using the facts in a well-informed way,” said his wife, Melinda Letts. A proud and likeable Scot with an impish grin, McIntosh cared for his staff but could be demanding. Interviewing one candidate for a job, he said: “You went to St John’s College, Oxford, at the same time as Tony Blair. So what went wrong?”
Neil Scott Wishart McIntosh was born one of two children in Kirkcaldy on the east coast of Scotland in 1947 to Bill McIntosh and Rena (née Scott). His father ran the renowned McIntosh furniture business in the Fife town, which had been in the family since the 19th century. His mother ran an electrical business…
…In 1971 McIntosh married Genista Tandy, a future director of the National Theatre and chief executive of the Royal Opera House, who was made a life peer as Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall. They divorced in 1990. He is survived by their two children: Flora is an opera singer who runs the arts charity Opera Up Close; Alex is the director of a sustainability consultancy called Create Sustain.
He married Letts in 1991. They met while working together at VSO, and she now teaches Latin and ancient Greek at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. “He had a remarkable ability to keep his brain unencumbered by detail,” she said. “I once noticed that his in-tray was empty. He said, ‘I’m not meant to have things in my in-tray. I’m the chief executive.’” McIntosh is also survived by their son, Fergus, head of fact checking at the New Yorker magazine, and Isobel, a climate campaigner and policy manager for Global Justice Now.
McIntosh loved golf, sailing and walking. He called his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease a “thundering nuisance” but refused to let it stop him. In retirement from 2012 McIntosh was president of the CfBT Schools Trust and a director of the Access Project to provide mentoring and skills coaching for disadvantaged young people to get into good universities, an honorary fellow of the department of education at Oxford University and the governor of four schools.
Latterly he was also stricken with dementia, but one compensation, said his wife, was that he proposed marriage to her twice in the last year of his life.
Neil McIntosh CBE, director of third-sector organisations, was born on July 24, 1947. He died of Parkinson’s disease on January 5, 2026, aged 78
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/neil-mcintosh-obituary-director-of-shelter-c2fn52j7m