"What gave Martin's work its edge was his acute sense that what was occurring was no simple triumph of western values in an evil empire, but a complex difficult new phase in a nation's history.
And he reported on what he saw with a keen awareness that of how the ending of socialism affected the daily lives of ordinary citizens, as emerging oligarchs seized immense wealth.
His documentary series Death of an Empire on the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the New Russia won Gold at the 2012 "New York Festivals World's Best Radio Programs" Awards.
In retirement, he lives in Ireland and spends some months of the year in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France where he maintains a small house and a smaller vineyard.
[4] In March 2018, he wrote an opinion piece for The Irish Times concerning the Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, in which the headline suggested it was unlikely that Vladimir Putin was responsible for the attack but the article itself did not.