Allen Leech of Downton Abbey on the new film and his inspiring Cork teacher 

 Downton Abbey: A New Era has opened in cinemas, and its Irish star is delighted his character Tom Branson even gets a wedding scene  

Allen Leech stars as Tom Branson and Tuppence Middleton as Lucy Smith in Downton Abbey: A New Era. 

Downton Abbey was already being talked of as an emerging TV phenomenon. But it was during an encounter with airport security in the early days of the series that Irish actor Allen Leech realised quite how big it had become.

“The episode where I left Sybil in Ireland and came back to Downton had just aired in the States the night before,” he laughs at the memory. “I was coming in through US immigration in New York, and the guy looked at my passport, looked at me, shook his head and went: ‘That was a shitty thing you did to your wife’.”