A new book brings us some of the best of the city's old streets and buildings, contrasting them with photographs taken from exactly the same vantage points today.

Glasgow: The Classic Then And Now Photographs shows you how much Scotland's largest city has altered its appearance over the decades.

For every place such as George Square, which has hardly changed, there is one such as Charing Cross, where many buildings were flattened to make way for the M8.

Urban renewal, slum clearances, fires, the coming of the railway era - all of these shoulder some of the responsibility for the disappearance of parts of old Glasgow.

The book covers everywhere from Sauchiehall Street and Queen Street to Great Western Road and Queen's Park, from Renfield Street and St Enoch Square to the Botanic Gardens, and from the Western Infirmary to Broomielaw.

The archive photographs – the earliest, of the original Theatre Royal, in Dunlop Street, was taken in the 1860s – are the work of some well-known photographers, including Francis Firth, George Washington Wilson, Thomas Annan and his son James Craig Annan.

One photograph, which was taken in 1926, the year of the General Strike, shows mounted policemen, cars and horse-drawn carts making their way along Buchanan Street – an area that has long since been pedestrianised.

Another shows the much-missed Empire Theatre in Sauchiehall Street, while a third shows the huge, 200-bedroom St Enoch Hotel, said to have been the third-largest hotel in Europe at that time.

All of the archive photographs are matched by newer ones taken by Duncan I McEwan, a photographer whose CV includes two stints as official photographer for the Scottish teams at the Commonwealth Games.

The book has been written and researched by James McCarroll, managing director of the publishers, Ayr-based Fort Publishing.

Mr McCarroll, a history graduate, once lived in the West End - and not just in any building, but in a house designed by the great Scottish architect Alexander 'Greek' Thomson, in Great Western Terrace.

"I have always been interested in architecture, and I think that as far as the Victorian and Edwardian eras are concerned, it's the best in Britain after London," says Mr McCarroll.

The new book is an intriguing look at a vanished Glasgow.

Glasgow: The Classic Then and Now Photographs (Fort Publishing, hardback, £13.95) is published on October 29. It is available from all good bookshops and via amazon.co.uk