Lion in the Living Room

Five decades after two young men brought a playful cub into their London home, the tale has touched a whole new generation

- Heidi Krause

The story begins in London in the swinging ’60s. In the exotic-animals section of the legendary department store Harrods, with its motto Omnia Omnibus Ubique—all things for all people, everywhere—a lion cub sits in a small cage. Two fashionably longhaired, bellbottom-wearing young Australians, John Rendall and Anthony ‘Ace’ Bourke, chance upon the little African cat and decide to buy him. 

Rendall and Bourke name the cub Christian and raise him as a pet in their groovy pad in the city’s affluent Chelsea area. Their domesticated charge eventually becomes too big for their flat and for London, so they take him to Africa in August 1970.

A remarkable story so far, but it’s what occurred after this which made Christian the lion a 21st-century popculture sensation. 

A year after parting with their beloved pet, Rendall and Bourke travelled to northern Kenya, where Christian had been successfully assimilated into the wild. Their reunion with the lion was filmed. A few years ago, the moment was posted on YouTube, where it has generated more than a hundred million hits and went viral, becoming a staple for email forwards.

If you haven’t seen it yet, the threeminute clip shows Christian perched on a rock as the two men wait expectantly about 70 metres away. The animal stares at the men, before taking a few steps closer for a better look. Suddenly there is an undeniable flash of recognition and the young lion leaps into action, grunting with excitement as he makes a beeline for the waiting pair and bounds into their open arms. Wrapping his huge paws around their shoulders, the lion fervently licks his old friends’ faces and nuzzles at their necks.