A WAR of words has broken out over a proposal to build a bandstand on Petersfield Heath to mark the Queen's diamond subilee celebrations next year.

So caustic has the row become, after Petersfield town councillors flatly rejected the scheme last week, that historian David Jeffery who is a member of the town's diamond jubilee working party, has challenged one of the authority's dissenters to a "verbal duel" in public.

For full story, see this week's Petersfield Herald.