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Tonight with Matthew Sweet, Night Waves remembers Peter O'Toole the actor - with Roger Michell who directed him in his last great film role and film producer Kevin Loader, Annabel Leventon who shared a stage with him in Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, and theatre critic Michael Billington.

Also tonight, the behavioural geneticist Robert Plomin whose latest findings suggest that genetic difference in the UK accounts for over half the variation between pupils' GCSE results. He explains why he thinks his findings have policy implications and also discusses why making links between genes, psychology and cognition became a taboo subject, and why it's taking off again now.

Then it's to Japan for Christmas in the company of Radio 3 New Generation thinker Christopher Harding. He's our guide to Christmas's place on Japan's commercial carousel, complete with much ado about cake and Santa-san.

Finally, as the second of Peter Jackson's Hobbit films, The Desolation of Smaug, hits big screens all over the country, we celebrate the Dragon of the North in myth and literature. Unlike its Chinese counterpart, western dragons signal trouble from their origins at the bottom of the Norseman's world to their place atop piles of treasure in Old English Beowulf and J R R Tolkien. Norse and Anglo-Saxon expert and New Generation Thinker Eleanor Barraclough and John Lennard, literature and fantasy scholar, join forces to guide Matthew through a maze of dragons, drakes, worms and were-dragons to discover what is old about the monster and what has been added by modernity and especially modern warfare.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.