Ayrshire and Arran is an area of striking contrasts. Its landscape ranges from dune-backed sands to rolling pastures to moors. The local architecture is similarly diverse, marrying natural beauty with industry and modernity. It is the county of Robert Burns, commemorated by an exuberant monument at his birthplace in Alloway. Other highlights include the monument at the Skelmorlie Aisle in Largs; the stones of Machrie Moor; medieval castles and planned towns; early churches and abbeys; and some of the best-known country houses, Culzean Castle and Dumfries House. From railway bridges to farmsteads, town halls to Edwardian villas, this new Pevsner guide presents a comprehensive look at life in the county through its buildings.

Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire are among the least-explored counties in Scotland, but no other area can lay claim to their astounding diversity of character, from the wild remote moorland of the south to the landscape of the Clyde estuary in the north-west, and from deeply rural villages to former steel and iron towns of the Lanarkshire coalfields. Renfrewshire boasts not only the medieval abbey at the centre of Paisley, but also the great port of Greenock, with one of the grandest municipal palaces of Victorian Scotland,and in the countryside Georgian houses and well-to-do Edwardian villas, including Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Windyhill. In Lanarkshire are the great medieval castles of Bothwell and Craignethan, William Adam's majestic hunting lodge at Chatelherault, and planned settlements of international significance, from the model weaving village of Robert Owen's New Lanark to the post-war New Town of Cumbernauld.