Walter Daniel John Tull (28 April 1888 – 25 March 1918) was an English professional footballer who played as an inside forward for Tottenham Hotspur and Northampton Town. He was the second person of Afro-Caribbean/mixed heritage to play in the top division of the Football League, the first Afro-Caribbean/mixed heritage outfield player in the top division of English football, and the first to be commissioned as an infantry officer in the British Army. His professional football career began after he was spotted whilst playing for his local amateur club, Clapton

Tull was brought up in a National Children's Home orphanage in Bethnal Green, London, along with his brother, following the death of their parents. He joined Tottenham in 1909, and transferred to Northampton Town in 1911, where he made 111 first-team appearances.

During the First World War, Tull served in the Footballers' Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment, and fought in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 30 May 1917 despite the 1914 Manual of Military Law specifically excluding "Negroes"/"Mulattos" from exercising command as officers. Tull fought in Italy in 1917–18, and was Mentioned in Despatches for "gallantry and coolness" while leading his company of 26 men on a raiding party into enemy territory. He returned to France in 1918, and was killed in action on 25 March during the Spring Offensive; his body was never recovered.

Black British is a term used to describe British people of black African descent, especially those of Afro-Caribbean background. The term has been used from the 1950s to refer to Black people from former British colonies in the West Indies (i.e. the New Commonwealth) and Africa, who are residents of the United Kingdom and consider themselves British. Others are also from former French-speaking colonies in Africa such as Senegal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (which was Belgian), and many of the Black Africans in Britain still speak French as well as their own native languages.

The term 'black' has historically had a number of applications as a racial and political label, and may be used in a wider socio-political context, to encompass a broader range of non-European ethnic minority populations in Britain, though this is a controversial and non-standard definition.

Black British is primarily used as an official category in UK national statistics ethnicity classifications, where it is sub-divided into 'Caribbean', 'African' and 'Other Black' groups.

Michael Morpurgo, OBE,FKC, AKC (born 5 October 1943) is an English author, poet, playwright and librettist, best known for his work in children's literature. He was the third Children's Laureate.

Michael Morpurgo was educated at schools in central London, Devon, Sussex and Kent; his unhappy experiences at boarding school would inform his novel The Butterfly Lion, one of his more famous works. He attended the independent prep school Mount House in Devon until he was 13. He then went to The King's School, an independent school in Canterbury, and while there he was once described as being "rather stupid but great at rugby". He later trained for the British Army at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He then took up a teaching job.^{[citation needed]} He graduated with a 3rd class degree in English and French from King's College London

Morpurgo's first job was as a primary school teacher, in Kent. In his late twenties, while he was teaching, he discovered his talent for storytelling, of which he later said "I could see there was magic in it for them, and realized there was magic in it for me."