I'm looking for a book to give me a general idea of the great civilisations that have ruled the world, how they rose developed and fell, can any kindly soul offer advice for a casual history buff?
If you are casual history lover please, for your own sake, don't try to read "The Decline of the West"
For one it's not all that great of a history book. Spengler throws all sorts of stuff in there that would not pass modern academic scholarship. He also speaks in a really really archaic language that's utterly incomprehensible to the point where I (no offense) seriously doubt that anyone who recommends it have actually read the book as oppose to just hearing about it.
Spengler is a good read to underline the historical-philosophical thought of the early 20th century but is really not a good book to learn history per se from.
Toynbee is better but also suffers from the problem of being old and outdated.
If you want a good book to read on this that's an easier read and more recent, I strongly recommend The Origin of Political Order by Francis Fukyama.
While you're really looking for any world history textbook, I think your best bet in terms of non-outdated, professionally vetted, and accessible work on this topic is Jane Burbank and Fred Cooper's Empires in World History (2011). Check out Dominic Lieven's Empire as well (not as big of a fan of that one).
John Darwin's 'After Tamerlane - The Rise and Fall of Global Empires' is a good one. Only deals with 1400-2000 but is a useful corrective to the idea of empire and imperialism as some kind of solely European phenomenon (either as a good thing OR a bad thing). Quite long, over 600 pages.
It's a good one to go with the Burbank and Cooper one because they share a view about empires not being some kind of inevitably doomed aberration, but tackle how they actually work in different ways.
Ian Morris's Why the West Rules - For Now provides a decent, concise world history of western and eastern powers. It's in /r/askhistorians book list. Of course, as with most world histories, it's very broad. It's a geographical history and has some light cliodynamics (mathematical modeling of history) as well, so know that it is not without its own controversies.
"The Decline Of The West" comes to mind, by Oswald Spengler. You can also try " A Study of History" by Arnold Toynbee, or Croce's "On History" if you want some philosophy of history.