Summer in Sydney wouldn’t be the same without the Sydney Festival. How could we party away balmy evenings, dance the blues away, sing to our hearts content and picnic under the stars with the rest of the city without the Sydney Festival?

We couldn’t. We wouldn’t. We’d be strapped to a fan moaning about the heat.

If it wasn't for the Sydney Festival, we’d simply melt if their line up didn’t get cooler and cooler each year. It’s practically the only thing between us and global warming!

The Sydney Film Festival is a frenetic feast of films that descends upon the city like a flash flood in the night, sweeping aside the monotony of our everyday lives with ideas, imagery and insights and then leaving us to mop up the deluge. (We’re still recovering from the schlock horror that was Teeth, shown at the 2007 festival.)

Writers’ festivals are not just for authors, so if you haven’t published a best seller yet or your memoirs, don’t fret. Maybe you don’t write at all, maybe you like to read, or even better, listen. That’s okay too. In fact, if you are reading this guide right now, we can guarantee there is an event on at the Sydney Writers’ Festival that you would enjoy, from the high brow to the low brow. We’ve passed our monocle over all of them and have picked out only the finest for our Truthbooth readers.