George Adamson Educated at Dean Close School, Cheltenham, England, he moved to Kenya in 1925. After a series of jobs, which included time as a gold prospector, goat trader and professional safari hunter, he joined Kenya's game department in 1938 and was Senior Wildlife Warden of the Northern Frontier District. Six years later, he married Joy. It was in 1956 that he raised the lioness cub, Elsa, whom he helped to release into the wild and who became the subject of the 1966 feature film "Born Free" based on the book written by Joy. Adamson retired as a wildlife warden in 1961
Joy Adamson her grandmother. In her autobiography "The Searching Spirit", Adamson wrote about her grandmother, saying, "It is to her I owe anything that may be good in me". She grew up on an estate near Vienna, was educated in Vienna earning a music degree before studying sculpting and medicine. As a young adult, Adamson considered careers as a concert pianist, and in medicine. Joy Adamson married three times in the span of ten years. Her first marriage was to Viktor von Klarwill (aka Ziebel; 1902-1985). She went to Kenya in 1937 where she met and married in 1938 the botanist Peter