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The website has emerged from the pack as a clear leader among newspaper and business information websites.This capacity to spot trends and make sense of them was a defining characteristic of Martin professionally and personally. As the dot mania took hold in the late 1990s, Martin was among the first to warn that much nonsense was being talked about “new paradigms” and “new business models.” In several of his sharp and widely read FT columns, he pointed out that genuinely new business models were rare and that there was no substitute for actually earning revenues. He presciently warned that when capital became so cheap great follies would ensue. For this and much else, in 1999 he won the annual Wincott Award for oustanding financial journalism.On the personal side, I remember in the late 1970s visiting Peter and Sandy at the home they owned at the time in Islington, and being amazed to discover that he had taken up the then peculiar American craze of jogging Typically, it was not enough just to run. Peter had become an expert on running shoes, could wax lyrical on the merits of different jogging routes, and had subscribed to a houseful of running magazines.He was epileptic, but otherwise his health was good. The discovery two years ago that he had skin cancer was naturally a concern.

For a while the disease seemed to have been checked, but more symptoms began to appear towards the end of last year. A tumour was removed from his brain around Easter this year, and in the summer he cycled 200 kilometres on holiday in France But the cancer had spread. Business journalism has been robbed of a writer at the height of his powers and his family of a devoted husband and father.Michael Prest. Clark Gesner wrote the book, music and lyrics for You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, which ran for four years in New York from 1967. Based on Peanuts, the world-famous comic strip by Charles Schulz, it depicted one day in the life of Charlie Brown, his friends and his dog Snoopy, capturing the strip’s off-beat charm and humour in a series of good-natured vignettes and songs. Clark Gesner, actor and writer: born Augusta, Maine 27 March 1938; died New York 23 July 2002. Charlie (a very young man “with what you call a failure face”) sang of his fascination with the “little red-headed girl”, Linus serenaded his security blanket, bossy Lucy sang of her unrequited love for piano-playing Schroeder, and the goggled canine Snoopy recounted his secret life as flying ace the Red Baron.Gary Burghoff, later to achieve fame as Radar in both film and television versions of M*A*S*H, played Charlie Brown, with Bob Balaban as Linus, Reva Rose as Lucy and Bill Hinnant as Snoopy.

Although a transfer to Broadway did not last long, the show ran for a year in Boston, spawned six national tours, many foreign productions (including one in London at the Fortune Theatre in 1968) and is constantly performed in schools, colleges and community theatres. In 2000 a revival staged in Tokyo became a hit.You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown started as a collection of 10 songs written by Gesner and based on Peanuts. Initially, the holders of the strip’s syndication rights refused permission for use of the characters, but Gesner contacted Charles Schulz directly and sent him a five-song demonstration tape Weeks later Schulz telephoned Gesner and gave his blessing. Released in 1966 by Leo Records, a subsidiary of the MGM label, the disc is now considered to have been the first ever pre-production “concept album”, though Gesner had no thoughts at the time of turning his score into a musical.The producer Arthur Whitelaw convinced him to work on a theatrical version, which was presented on 7 March 1967 at the tiny 179-seat Theater 80 in New York’s East Village, where it ran for 1,597 performances.