8 FEBRUARY 2003, Page 30

Feeling good in one's skin

Ferdinand Mount

RESPECT: THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER IN AN AGE OF INEQUALITY by Richard Sennett Allen Lane, 120, pp. 288, ISBN 071399617X Of all the unfashionable ideas you can think of. 'respect' looked least likely to make a comeback. To be modern was to be anything but respectful. You had to be irreverent, use your critical faculties, deconstruct. debunk, debag. And trying to be respectable yourself was even worse, like deliberately choosing to be buried alive.

Yet curiously the words and the aspiration behind them have sprung to life