War In The Balkans: Britpack draw on children's war effort

SOME MAY be more renowned for pickling sheep or making lists of everyone they have slept with, but a group of Britain's most talented artists have now turned to more child-friendly work.

Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Patrick Caulfield and the musician Sir Paul McCartney are among 27 artists who have donated an outline drawing for a colouring book to be sent to children in Albanian refugee camps.

The 32-page book, which includes four blank pages for children's own pictures, and comes with pencils, will be available to buy in this country. All profits will go to Unicef.

The film star Paul Newman, who has already given $250,000 (pounds 160,000) to the US Kosovo appeal, donated pounds 10,000 to cover the cost of printing 100,000 copies.

Karen Wright, co-chairman of Colour for Kosovo, said: "Six weeks ago I was on a train with Daphne Astor, the other chairman... I was hoping to do a colouring book of modern British artists and she suggested we do it for Kosovo. That was decided at Cambridge and by the time we got to King's Cross we had already come up with the rough outline." Seventy thousand copies left for Albania yesterday. The rest are on sale for pounds 5 at the National and Tate Galleries, WH Smith Online and Tesco.