Sixty-five of the world's leading authors and artists have written a joint letter criticising Donald Trump's immigration ban and have urged him to reconsider it.

The letter, which was organised by the PEN America advocacy group, was signed by Zadie Smith, Martin Amis, J.M. Coetzee, Patrick Stewart Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Siri Hustvedt, Jhumpa Lahiri, Azar Nafisi, Anish Kapoor, Orhan Pamuk and Philip Roth, among many others.

It calls on the president to "to rescind your Executive Order of January 27, 2017, and refrain from introducing any alternative measure that similarly impairs freedom of movement and the global exchange of arts and ideas".

Mr Trump's planned measures against illegal immigrants and the banning of citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States have drawn protests, such as an event last week that activists called "A Day Without Immigrants", which sought to highlight the vital importance of immigrants in everyday American life.