read only texbox to html with php

I have a readonly textbox that gets mailed as a newsletter. The text is a standard covering letter. The problem is when I try and convert it to html it doesn't work It is inserted into a variable via a form textarea $mail_text. "....available on the web site <a href="http://www.myurl.org">http://www.myurl.org</a> so you can see who is doing....." I tried this htmlentities((stripslashes($mail_text))); Any ideas? R.