{"id":751274,"date":"2026-08-27T09:56:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T09:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/751274\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T09:56:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T09:56:17","slug":"volunteer-written-off-by-doctors-publishes-first-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/751274\/","title":{"rendered":"Volunteer ‘written off’ by doctors publishes first book"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man born with a rare condition that means he cannot smile or blink has published his first book, a memoir of his experiences while growing up.<\/p>\n

Jack Marshall, 28, wrote The Boy Who Can’t Smile after being told when he was a child that he would never amount to anything.<\/p>\n

“Doctors said I would never be able to walk or talk,” he said. “I was written off by professionals, who couldn’t see past my disability.”<\/p>\n

Marshall, who lives Belton, Lincolnshire, and regularly visits his sister in Stoke-on-Trent for respite breaks, has Moebius Syndrome, external<\/a>, a rare neurological condition that has left him with no facial nerves.<\/p>\n

He was also born without some of the cerebellum part of his brain, affecting his balance and coordination, is blind in one eye and has reduced hearing.<\/p>\n

Having been told by a primary school headteacher that he could only attend part-time, due to being unacademic, Marshall went on to defy the odds.<\/p>\n

His mum took him out of his primary and found a place at another school, which suited him much better.<\/p>\n

He went on to go to college and university and gained a masters degree in criminology and criminal justice.<\/p>\n

“Thankfully, my mum and my sister are very strong women, and have always been my biggest supporters and advocates,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man born with a rare condition that means he cannot smile or blink has published his first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":751275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-751274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}