Reading Copy Book Blog

If you don’t live under a rock, you’ve probably seen the beautiful phenomenon of A Lion Called Christian on Youtube already, and probably know the amazing, touching story. But in case you don’t:

A Lion Called Christian tells the remarkable story of how Anthony “Ace” Bourke and John Rendall, visitors to London from Australia in 1969, bought the boisterous lion cub in the pet department of Harrods. For several months, the three of them shared a flat above a furniture shop on London’s King’s Road, where the charismatic and intelligent Christian quickly became a local celebrity, cruising the streets in the back of a Bentley, popping in for lunch at a local restaurant, even posing for a fashion advertisement. But the lion cub was growing up—fast—and soon even the walled church garden where he went for exercise wasn’t large enough for him. How could Ace and John avoid having to send Christian to a zoo for the rest of his life? A coincidental meeting with English actors Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, stars of the hit film Born Free, led to Christian being flown to Kenya and placed under the expert care of “the father of lions” George Adamson. Incredibly, when Ace and John returned to Kenya to see Christian a year later, they received a loving welcome from their lion, who was by then fully integrated into Africa and a life with other lions.

The book – originally published in the 1970s but long out of print – is now being re-released, and is chock full of photographs of Christian, from cubhood to adulthood.

And now, in case you haven’t seen it, the video that started all the attention:

I can’t watch it without getting all teary.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 10:14 am and is filed under AbeBooks, bestsellers, books, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.