Elsa the lioness 1 February 1956 after George Adamson was forced to kill their mother when she charged him, in defence of her three cubs. George only later realised why the lioness had acted so aggressively towards him. George and his wife Joy then adopted the lioness’s four-day-old cubs. While Elsa lived in many ways like a domesticated pet when she was small, Joy Adamson, whom Elsa trusted the most, considered her relationship with Elsa to be that of equals. Indeed, after sending the other two to a zoo, Joy was fiercely determined to give Elsa the education she needed to hunt and
George Worsley Adamson "Meet My Folks!" (1961); this was followed by the drawings he did for Ted Hughes's first book of children's stories, "How the Whale Became" (1963), and those for the first edition of " The Iron Man" (1968). In 1970, Adamson illustrated the book based on Richard Carpenter's television series "Catweazle"; this was followed in 1971 by the drawings he did for the book based on the second series, "Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac". In the 1980s, he illustrated the first five of the Richard Ingrams and John Wells "Dear Bill" books for "Private Eye". Besides work for books, Adamson undertook