Rent A Lion Called Christian (2009)

Extraordinary story - A Lion Called Christian review by BN

Never knew anything about this. Remarkable 45min story about two Australians enjoying swinging London in the 60s who buy a lion cub on a whim from Harrods - which extraordinarily sold exotic animals at the time. Christian the lion bonds with the pair, behaves and is treated like a pussycat but as it steadily grows they realise that no matter how benign its character it's still a wild animal that will ultimately get too large for them to handle and will need a larger exercise area than the kindly leant Moravian church yard they use. Via an entirely chance meeting with Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna famous after the Born Free film, Christian starts on the road to being patriated to the wild on George Adamson's reserve in Kenya. The boys visit on a trip one year later and there's a tentative then exuberant reunion. Christian had joined a pride with a larger male but due to misadventure he soon becomes the alpha male and there is the inference right at the end that he fathers cubs but curiously no further information is revealed of his fate or offspring after that, which struck me as odd.

Luckily there is plenty of home movie type footage of Christian in the 70s, but it wasn't until recently with the work of an American university student that the story was put together into this documentary type film and a book.

Definitely worth a watch. Quite sweet.

Lots of footage of Travers, McKenna and Adamson.