The Beast Beyond the Fence

Marcus Rashford MBE is Manchester United's iconic number 10 and an England International footballer.

During the lockdown imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Marcus teamed up with the food distribution charity FareShare to cover the free school meal deficit for vulnerable children across the UK, raising in excess of 20 million pounds. Marcus successfully lobbied the British Government to u-turn policy around the free food voucher program - a campaign that has been deemed the quickest turnaround of Government policy in the history of British politics - so that 1.3 million vulnerable children continued to have access to food supplies whilst schools were closed during the pandemic.

In response to Marcus's End Child Food Poverty campaign, the British Government committed GBP400 million to support vulnerable children across the UK, supporting 1.7 million children for the next 12 months.

In October 2020, he was appointed MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours. Marcus has committed himself to combating child poverty in the UK and his book You Are a Champion, written with Carl Anka, is an inspiring guide for children about reaching their full potential. Marcus's first fiction title, The Breakfast Club Adventures, was written with Alex Falase-Koya.

Alex Falase-Koya is a London native. He has been both reading and writing since he was a teenager; anything at the cross-section of social commentary and genre fiction floats his boat. He was a winner of Spread the Word's 2019 London Writers Awards for YA/children's. He is the cowriter of Marcus Rashford's debut children's fiction title The Breakfast Club Adventures.