Christian

Christian was a lion born on 12 August 1969 at a small zoo in Ilfracombe, Devon, and sold as a cub by the London department store Harrods, which then traded in exotic animals. Two young Australians who had just arrived in London, John Rendall and Anthony “Ace” Bourke, saw him in the store and bought him for 250 guineas. With their friends Jennifer Mary Taylor and Unity Jones they raised him in their flat on the King’s Road in Chelsea, at the end of the street known as World’s End, and then in the basement of the furniture shop where they worked, which was by coincidence called Sophistocat. A local minister let them exercise him in a churchyard nearby, and they took him on day trips to the seaside.

By 1970 he had grown too big for London. Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, the stars of Born Free, met him in the shop and suggested the young men ask George Adamson, who with his wife Joy had returned Elsa to the wild, for help. Adamson agreed, and in 1970 Christian was flown to Kenya with Rendall and Bourke and taken to Adamson’s camp at Kora on the Tana River. There Adamson introduced him to Boy, an older male who had appeared in Born Free, and to young lionesses, to form a new pride. The pride suffered many losses: one lioness was probably taken by crocodiles, another was killed by wild lions, and Boy, after a serious injury, fatally wounded Adamson’s assistant Stanley and was shot. Christian became the head of the pride.

In 1971, nearly a year after leaving him, Rendall and Bourke returned. Adamson warned that Christian might not remember them. Filmed for a documentary, he approached cautiously, then ran to them, stood on his hind legs and wrapped his front legs around their shoulders; the lionesses Mona and Lisa and the cub Supercub welcomed the men too. They saw him once more, about a year later, when he was twice the size, with a pride and cubs of his own. Facing hostile wild lions at Kora, Christian stayed away from camp for longer and longer, and in early 1973 he was last seen crossing the Tana River towards Meru National Park. Thirty years later the clip of the reunion went viral online and has been watched well over 100 million times.