3 Complements the 10-part BBC Radio 3 series
The Escape Artist
On an overcast April evening in Barcelona in 1916, a bizarre boxing bout took place between two men who appeared to have been beamed in from completely opposing galaxies. In one corner flexed the American Jack Johnson, the son of two former slaves who had risen from an impoverished background to be crowned the first black heavyweight boxing champion of the world. And in the other corner trembled a slippery upper class character calling himself Arthur Cravan: an inveterate loudmouth, charlatan, poet-pugilist and professional provocateur, who announced to all who would hear that he was the nephew of Oscar Wilde.