A Lion's Tale

George Adamson (3 February 1906 – 20 August 1989), also known as the "Baba ya Simba" ("Father of Lions" in Swahili), was a British wildlife conservationist and author. He and his wife Joy Adamson are best known through the movie Born Free and best selling book with the same title, which is based on the true story of Elsa the Lioness, an orphaned lioness cub they raised and later released into the wild. Several other films have been made based on Adamson's life.

Christian the lion
Christian was a lion originally purchased by Australians John Rendall and Anthony "Ace" Bourke from Harrods department store of London in 1969 and ultimately reintroduced to the African wild by conservationist George Adamson. One year after George Adamson released Christian to the wild, his former owners decided to go looking for him to see whether Christian would remember them. Surprisingly, he did, and with him were two lionesses who accepted the men as well.

My depiction of Christian the lion

Official George Adamson Website
http://www.georgeadamson.org/christian

Early years

Christian with London owners John Rendall and Anthony Bourke. Christian with George Adamson at Kora National Reserve.
Christian was originally acquired by Harrods from the now-defunct zoo park in Ilfracombe. Rendall would later recall that the department store was eager to sell the cub, which had escaped from his cage one night and destroyed the merchandise in the carpet department. Rendall and Bourke purchased Christian for 250 guineas.

Rendall and Bourke, along with their friends Jennifer Mary Taylor and Unity Jones, cared for the lion where they lived in London until he was a year old. As he got larger, the men moved Christian to their furniture store – coincidentally named Sophistocat – where living quarters in the basement were set aside for him. Rendall and Bourke obtained permission from a local vicar to exercise Christian at a church graveyard, and the men also took the lion on day trips to the seaside.

Christian's growing size and the increasing cost of his care led Rendall and Bourke to understand they could not keep him in London. When Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, stars of the film Born Free, visited Rendall and Bourke's furniture store and met Christian, they suggested that Bourke and Rendall ask the assistance of George Adamson. Adamson, a Kenyan conservationist, who together with his wife Joy raised and released Elsa the Lioness, agreed to reintegrate Christian into the wild at his compound in the Kora National Reserve. Virginia McKenna writes about the experience in her memoir The Life in My Years, published March 2009.
Adamson introduced Christian to an older male lion, "Boy", who had been used in the movie Born Free and who also featured prominently in the documentary film The Lions Are Free, and subsequently to a female cub Katania in order to form the nucleus of a new pride. The pride suffered many setbacks: Katania was possibly devoured by crocodiles at a watering hole; another female was killed by wild lions; and Boy was severely injured, afterwards losing his ability to socialize with other lions and humans, and was shot by Adamson after fatally wounding an assistant. These events left Christian as the sole surviving member of the original pride.
Over the course of a year, as George Adamson continued his work, the pride established itself in the region around Kora, with Christian as the head of the pride started by Boy