Revolutions are politics writ large, moments when political reality and political aspirations collide and erupt in often epochal transformations. This course considers the aspirations and the reality, examining the role of revolution as an immensely influential idea (whether dream or nightmare) and hugely consequential event (whether willed, determined or contingent). In particular it probes the notion of politics ‘writ large’ – how revolutions have been shaped by the expression and circulation of ideas through print and other media. Books, pamphlets, photographs and films can supply evidence in reflecting on the role of ideology, agency, public opinion and political culture in revolutionary change. The course’s approach involves elements of comparative historical analysis, political theory, history of political thought, political sociology and media analysis. The course begins with conceptual and methodological issues before examining particular revolutions, centrally those in seventeenth-century England, eighteenth-century America and France, and twentieth-century Russia, China and Iran. This is followed by consideration of the demise of European communism and of revolutionary resurgence in the present century, notably the 'Arab Spring', as a preliminary to a concluding section, which asks whether fundamental political change remains desirable or possible in a twenty-first century context: does the dream still live, or has the nightmare ended?