the lion at world's end

So I'd gotten this little video a while ago - a lion, raised in London by two Australian blokes in the early 70s, was brought back to Africa to be introduced into the wild. They wrote a book about it in the 70s, "A Lion Called Christian" and curious, I decided to read it. The blokes, Ace and John, bought him at Harrods and decided to call him Christian. Christian lived in a rather hip part of London known as "World's End." While in London, Christian lived with these two guys, played with them, hung out in the furniture shop above the basement flat where he lived, and was sort of like a really big family pet, gentle, affectionate, and playful. It's funny too, that these days people would be all like "What? You can't have a lion as a pet, that's ridiculous, that is!" etc. but back then, people seemed really relaxed and groovy about it like "Hey man, neat lion!" You can see from the early footage that Christian liked to play with Ace and John, and specifically, jump up into their arms, not in an "I'm going to rip UR face off" kind of way but a friendly "I love U! Let's play!" kind of way.

Fast forward to Kenya - after staying with Christian to help acclimate him to his new life, Ace and John left him in the care of a professional lion rehabilitator George Adamson (who worked with the lions in "Born Free") who was going to create a new pride of lions for Christian to belong to. They came back for a visit, and were told that it was possible that Christian would not remember them. Their reunion is so sweet and Whitney adds a lovely (if incredibly cheesy) soundtrack. Made me cry, it did.