In 2017, he told the Guardian: “The cut and thrust of a successful school can be very bonding. I was always encouraged to be on teams at sport; I got a lot from that. Would I send my son to Eton? I might.” In the event, he didn’t. “It wasn’t the right thing for my son,” he says now. “We just decided what was best for him.” The way he discusses death and grief is admirably honest. Has he written about this in any of the songs? “No. People will, you know … they’ll find in the songs what they want to find in them.”

You may know him as the star of TV shows like Band Of Brothers, Homeland and Billions, plus films like Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, but Damian Lewis is adding another string to his bow in 2023. This week, he releases his debut album, Mission Creep, via Decca Records.I ask if he would like a drink. “I want to drink more coffee.” Does he fancy an alcoholic drink? “No, I can’t drink alcohol today. My daughter is 16 today. Sweet 16. We’ve got a little surprise dinner for her tonight.” How have the kids been? “Amazing. They’re incredible. That’s all I’m going to say about them.” He says he thinks he has said enough about Helen and the family.

Speaking about ‘She Comes’ Lewis explains “'She Comes' is the first song I wrote for my debut album, so that makes it ... my first song (That I've shared with the world, at any rate….). It’s about ghosts, and one ghost in particular. The album has hybrid sounds all through it but this song leans heavily on a folk set up before crescending with a jazz feel brought by my brilliant band”. Lewis linked up with one of today’s most exciting jazz musicians, Giacomo Smith, who in turn introduced Lewis to a collection of brilliant musicians, many of whom had played with Smith in the hugely loved and admired Kansas Smitty’s House Band. Lewis formed his band and early shows at London’s Omeara and Koko gave him a first sense of what leading a band in front of a live audience could feel like. “It helps that the players are all insanely accomplished,” Lewis said. After Helen’s death, Damian wrote a touching tribute to her, where he recalled how she had told the couple’s 16-year-old daughter Manon, and 15-year-old Gulliver son that she had given him her blessing to find love again. Musicians becoming actors seems to be a lot more acceptable than actors becoming musicians. Do you have a take on why that is? As his acting schedule freed up due to the pandemic, he began playing and writing songs and later teamed up with various musicians including Italian-American Giacomo Smith.I’m thinking about what he said about death being a fertile period. Can he expand on that? “Well, death is oddly ecstatic. Along with birth, it’s the ultimate act of life, and it brings this enormous energy to it. And you carry that energy around with you. However deep and profound your sadness, a new beginning always has an energy to it. And it is a new beginning when your wife dies and you’re left on your own. Life has changed. So there is an energy in that.” Cary says that the more they explored the story of Philby and Elliott, the more personal it became to them. “It’s about our people, posh white men, and how they’ve endangered the country. And that’s what makes it timely. How their friendships, their clubbiness, have endangered the country. ” Like Philby, Cary went to Westminster. “The two characters cared more about themselves and their club and way of life than the country itself.” Damian and his brilliant band played gig number eight of their UK Tour in Gateshead at The Glasshouse International Centre for Music (formally Sage 2) on Saturday, October 7, 2023 in support of his debut album Mission Creep. Damian opened the show with his first single Down on the Bowery, followed by Zaragoza, Hole in My Roof, My Little One, Soho Tango and nine more songs, not including encore songs! He also played his new songs Pentonville Prison and Traffic Jam. For encore he played a cover of After Midnight and his other new song She Makin’ Me Change. We are talking in a plush recording studio near King’s Cross ­station. Record company assistants flit discreetly about, and a photographer waits to shoot Lewis’s ­portrait. He looks lean and sculpted, in tight jeans, T-shirt, and the kind of ­patterned cardigan that only a man supremely confident in his own style could carry off. He has a piercing gaze and impeccable manners: softly spoken and drily amusing, he also has a fine line in self-­deprecation. I suspect that, beneath the surface, he is conflicted about giving this interview. He has poured a lot into making his album, and wants to do his duty by promoting it, but there are some things he would rather not talk about.