A while back I posted a video of this lion reunion and now, here is the story behind it.
“Christian used to lie beside me while I did the accounts at weekends,” remembers Jennifer Mary Taylor, who worked there.
“And every so often, if I’d ignored him for too long, he’d sock me across the head with one of his great big paws.
“He was very loving and affectionate – he liked to stand and put his paws on your shoulders. But he was…”, she pauses. “I mean, he was a lion. Does that sound silly?”
Christian the lion (named by someone with a Biblical sense of humour) arrived in
Chelsea at a time when the King’s Road – home to Mick Jagger – was the very heart of the Swinging Sixties.
For a year, the Big Cat was part of it all, cruising the streets in the back of a Bentley, popping in for lunch at Casserole, a local restaurant, even posing for a Biba fashion advert.
He eventually grew too big to be kept as a pet and was taken to Kenya, where he was rehabilitated into the wild by the ‘Lion Man’, George Adamson.
Now, his story is to be told in a new book, written by the Australian John Rendall who, along with his friend Ace Berg, bought Christian from Harrods in 1969.
From a London living room to the wild, a great story.
