I WELCOME N F Savage's comment (Your Letters, February 14) on my suggestions for the staging of a Shaw anniversary festival. Indeed I would encourage more readers to air their thoughts on the matter. One of my objectives in making my proposals through the letters page of the Malvern Gazette was to stimulate a debate.

N F Savage states that the original series of Malvern Festivals "died out" - a situation which, as I understand it, was influenced in no small way by the outbreak of the Second World War - and that later attempts to revive the festival met with a similar fate.

While it is true the post-war festival and their latter day versions failed to recapture the public's imagination, let us not forget just how successful and popular those early festivals were.

As for any future festival, surely the trick would be to learn from past mistakes rather than attempt to reproduce them; to identify those elements which proved successful and adapt them to suit our own taste and requirements. After all, we can be inspired by the past and we can also learn from it.

Admittedly a venture of this magnitude - 'reduced' or otherwise - would require a lot of hard work from a lot of groups and individuals.

Vision, determination and unity would all be needed in no small measure.

On the other hand, we could, of course, abandon the idea and forget all about it. But, as N F Savage notes: "inertia will produce nothing and nothing will attract no-one ...".

Ledbury has its poetry festival, Cheltenham and Hay-on-Wye their literature festivals. Let Malvern have its Shaw Festival.

EDDIE THOMAS, Churchill Drive, Malvern.