Alex McNeil—In Memoriam

Our friend and colleague, Alex McNeil, passed away on July 13, 2026 following a long illness. The winner of two major awards from the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, Alex was a longstanding pillar of the Oxfordian movement, serving its organizations in multiple capacities while contributing significant scholarship and promoting the authorship question on YouTube and other media.  

In the 1990s and early 2000s Alex co-organized the Shakespeare Oxford Society conference in Newton, Massachusetts in 1999 and the Shakespeare Fellowship conference in Boston in 2002. He was selected as part of the delegation that presented the 2009 Oxfordian of the Year Award to Justice John Paul Stevens at the Supreme Court. A founding member of the Shakespeare Fellowship, Alex also edited their newsletter Shakespeare Matters and was instrumental in the 2013 unification of the Fellowship with the Shakespeare Oxford Society to form the current Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, for which he was named Oxfordian of the Year in 2014.

In addition to editing the Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter, he contributed several notable book chapters for edited collections, including Kevin Gilvary’s Dating Shakespeare’s Plays (2010) and A Poet’s Rage edited by William Boyle (2013). In 2023, in collaboration with filmmaker Cheryl Eagan-Donovan, Alex produced the hugely popular YouTube video, “Who Really Wrote Shakespeare? Shakespeare Authorship 101” which has been viewed more than 60,000 times. That same year he received the Tom Regnier Veritas Award from the SOF.

Those who had the pleasure of working with him describe Alex as modest and insightful, thoughtful and generous, and with a great sense of humor—a friend to be valued and cherished.  

At the 2026 Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship conference, Alex will receive a posthumous award. A celebration of Alex’s life will be held on Saturday, August 1, 2026 at 10 am at the United Parish of Auburndale, Massachusetts.

If you would like to share a memory of Alex in the upcoming issue of the Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter, please send an email by August 5, 2026