Co-Presidents of Decca Label Group, Tom Lewis and Laura Monks, say “We are so delighted that Damian chose Decca. His songwriting is poetic, poignant and deeply personal. The album, recorded just down the road in Kentish Town, has a raw and refreshing honesty to it. Damian really opens his heart and invites us in. It is a thing of great beauty.” Lewis has the urbane ease of a man to the establishment born – a diplomat, say, or an MI6 agent. In his latest drama, A Spy Among Friends, based on the Ben Macintyre novel, he plays the latter. The story is based on the real relationship between double agent Kim Philby (played by Guy Pearce) and MI6 operative Nicholas Elliott (Lewis), the friend tasked with extracting a confession from him. This gripping miniseries is his first role since the death of his wife, Helen McCrory, last year. In that time, Lewis admits, his life has been given a thorough shaking. The playful spirit of the song ­disguises a serious underlying theme. “It’s about plans going awry,” says Lewis. “And, you know, I’ve had to adjust a few of my plans over the last couple of years.” 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. 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 crescendoing with a jazz feel brought by my brilliant band.”

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. 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. 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.Actually, he says, the project had its genesis the best part of a decade ago when he sang a couple of songs on a Radio 2 show. One of his fellow guests was the singer and broadcaster Cerys Matthews, whose husband, producer Steve Abbott, was impressed with Lewis’s performance. Abbott suggested that he and Lewis record some songs, but then Lewis spent the next five years playing hedge-fund manager Bobby Axelrod in the American drama series Billions. A couple of years ago, with McCrory seriously ill, Lewis asked to be written out of the sixth series so he could be with his family. That was when he reconsidered Abbott’s proposal. Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory were one of Britain’s most feted acting couples. He made his name playing Major Richard Winters in the US second world war TV series Band of Brothers, created by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Perhaps he is best known as the former US marine and prisoner of war Nicholas Brody in the espionage thriller Homeland. Lewis seems to have two identities as an actor – in American dramas, he often plays macho military types. In British dramas, he tends to be cast in privileged establishment roles, of which the most obviously privileged is Henry VIII in the TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. Lewis is fabulous as the terrifying yet needy man-baby monarch. As for McCrory, she was simply one of the greatest actors of her generation on stage (The Seagull, Medea, The Deep Blue Sea) and screen (The Queen, Peaky Blinders, Harry Potter). They had been married nearly 14 years when she died in April 2021, aged 52.

I tell him how much I like A Spy Among Friends. We talk about how the top British private schools proved such a fertile recruiting ground for not only spies but double agents – of the Cambridge spy ring, Philby went to Westminster, Anthony Blunt to Marlborough, Donald Maclean to Gresham’s and Guy Burgess to Eton. Was Lewis ever approached to be a spook? “No,” he says. Were any of his contemporaries at Eton spies? “Rory Stewart?” Has Stewart ever admitted to it? “No, I’m only guessing.” (Stewart has always denied being a spy, but says that if he had been, he would not be able to confirm it.) 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.”Commenting on Damian’s music and his debut album, Co-Presidents of Decca Label Group, Tom Lewis and Laura Monks, say “We are so delighted that Damian chose Decca. His songwriting is poetic, poignant and deeply personal. The album, recorded just down the road in Kentish Town, has a raw and refreshing honesty to it. Damian really opens his heart and invites us in. It is a thing of great beauty.” His biggest headline show to date will be at Union Chapel in London on July 11, with more live dates expected to be announced soon, after he spoke about having conversations with Glastonbury festival. His songwriting is poetic, poignant and deeply personal. The album, recorded just down the road in Kentish Town, has a raw and refreshing honesty to it. Damian and his brilliant band played gig number ten of their UK Tour to a sold out show in Wavendon, Milton Keynes at The Stables in the Jim Marshall Auditorium on Monday, November 6, 2023 in support of his debut album Mission Creep. The Stables venue was founded by jazz royalty Sir John Dankworth and Dame Cleo Laine, which Damian thought was a brilliant legacy to have for the show. Fans were keen to share that they spotted Damian’s partner Alison Mosshart in the audience, front row. Lewis has been performing music his whole life, from choirs, to bands, to strumming for money on the streets. “If I can claim to be anything,” he says, “it’s a busker.”

Had he discussed his ambition to be a musician with McCrory? “Yes, she knew I was talking to Steve and meeting with Giacomo.” Did he tell her he was really going to go for it? “At that point, it hadn’t formulated that much in my mind.” I ask whether the change in direction is to do with McCrory’s death? “Not consciously, but it’s inevitable there’s change. When you’ve been married to someone and they die prematurely, you’re left careering in a different direction. And that throws up … ” He speaks slowly, stops and starts again, making sure he gets his words right. “It’s a very fertile, very creative, raw, open time, as well as being flattening and difficult and sad. It’s all those things at once. Anybody who hasn’t been through it won’t fully understand, but I think anybody who has been through it will.” Lewis grew up in St John’s Wood, a well-to-do area of London. His father was an insurance broker with Lloyd’s. His maternal grandfather was lord mayor of London, and down the generations on his mother’s side there is an impressive lineage of aristocrats, philanthropists, shipbuilders and a doctor to the royal family. Lewis was sent to boarding school aged eight, and went on to Eton, the country’s most famous private school. There, he studied drama and learned to play classical guitar. By the age of 16, he had decided he wanted to become an actor and went on to graduate from the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

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I always said I’m not doing ‘major’ label stuff, but Decca were very persuasive, very seductive and very supportive I said to everyone involved, ‘I am doing this for me, for fun, so let’s try and have some.’ ” Lewis self-financed the recording, but subsequently signed to major label Decca, a division of Universal Music. “It got big on me,” he jokes. If this side of your life were to be a success. How will you accommodate it with the various other facets of your career? The lyrics call for his lover to climb him “like a vine”, and hears him sing: “Start me laughing, stop me crying.” The Concorde, Stoneham Lane, Eastleigh, Hampshire, SO50 9HQ - Telephone: 023 8061 3989 - Directions