{"id":841692,"date":"2025-11-03T08:28:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T06:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=841692"},"modified":"2025-11-03T08:28:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T06:28:20","slug":"available-now-david-buckham-and-robyn-wilkinsons-new-book-the-spell-the-story-of-human-progress-and-how-the-west-lost-its-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/industry-news\/841692\/available-now-david-buckham-and-robyn-wilkinsons-new-book-the-spell-the-story-of-human-progress-and-how-the-west-lost-its-soul\/","title":{"rendered":"Available now: David Buckham and Robyn Wilkinson\u2019s new book \u2018The Spell\u2019 \u2013 The Story of Human Progress and How the West Lost its Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>David Buckham and Robyn Wilkinson have officially launched their much-anticipated new book, <em>The Spell: The Story of Human Progress and How the West Lost its Soul.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Answering questions like \u201cWhy do we, as humans, believe what we believe?\u201d and \u201cHow viable is modern liberal democracy in our polarising world?\u201d, <em>The Spell<\/em> is the story of human progress \u2013 from the first inkling of self-consciousness all the way through to today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thespell.co.za\/?utm_source=BusinessTech&amp;utm_medium=Article&amp;utm_term=November+2025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Click here learn more about <em>The Spell.<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c<em>The Spell<\/em> succeeds in its most important aim: it provokes,\u201d said Michael Avery, a prominent financial journalist and broadcaster with nearly two decades of experience covering financial markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt forces you to engage. It refuses indifference. And that, I think, is what makes it a serious book, one that will generate real debate, as all consequential writing should.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He explains that <em>The Spell <\/em>holds up a mirror to where we are in this current moment, in a way that\u2019s not flattering or filtered, but honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">About <em>The Spell<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Spell<\/em> is the fourth book that Buckham and Wilkinson have written together, with previous publications being bestsellers and published internationally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe are living under a spell. Not one spell in particular. It is in fact, a spell that is like a petri jar of stories, and we adopt one or another of the stories in our contemporary world,\u201d said Buckham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He explains that most people have an understanding of the universe, the world, and history that is written into them by culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI found that this book provided me with a lot of tools \u2013 not necessarily answers \u2013 but tools to think more critically,\u201d said Steven Mitchell, Head of Marketing at Monocle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Buckham added that this is one of the goals of the book &#8211; but that it is also far more than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c<em>The Spell <\/em>is an argument that since humankind first became self-conscious, all human thought and all human conceptualisation of itself has been driven by a desperate desire to explain the unexplainable,\u201d said Buckham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The point of <em>The Spell <\/em>is to show \u2013 not tell \u2013 that we are always immersed in competing narratives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Get your copy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David Buckham<\/strong> is the founder and CEO of Monocle, a highly successful, independent, results-focused management consulting firm specialising in banking and insurance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His co-author, <strong>Robyn Wilkinson<\/strong>, is a researcher, writer, and editor with extensive experience in the financial services industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They both hold master\u2019s degrees in English and are the co-authors of the bestselling books <em>The End of Money<\/em>, <em>The Age of Menace<\/em>, and <em>Unequal<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Spell<\/em> will be available for purchase at all major book retailers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thespell.co.za\/?utm_source=BusinessTech&amp;utm_medium=Article&amp;utm_term=November+2025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Click here learn more about <em>The Spell.<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Buckham and Robyn Wilkinson have officially launched their much-anticipated new book, The Spell: The Story of Human Progress and How the West Lost its Soul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":841693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10459],"tags":[23981,16446,16196,23983,23982],"class_list":["post-841692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-book-launch","tag-david-buckham","tag-monocle","tag-robyn-wilkinson","tag-the-spell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841692"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":841708,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841692\/revisions\/841708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}