Sham Lal

Sham Lal (1912-23 February 2007 Delhi) was an Indian literary critic and journalist, who served as the editor of The Times of India. He wrote a column Life and Letters for several years for Hindustan Times and later The Times of India.Rudrangshu Mukherjee has described him as the most erudite newspaper editor in India.

Sham worked with The Hindustan Times in Delhi from 1934 to 1948. He joined The Times of India in 1950, as Assistant Editor. He later served as the editor from 1967 to 1978. After his retirement, he continued as a columnist for The Times of India. In 1994, he moved his column to The Telegraph.

Bookshelves reached from floor to ceiling in every room, their contents neatly ordered, spanning several centuries of human thought and creativity. He had original issues of The Paris Review, Criterion, and of defunct but once-great Indian literary magazines, vast collections of poetry and drama, and what appeared to be every important work ever published in the fields of history, criticism and the humanities. It was one of the best private libraries. There is a possibly apocryphal story about thieves who broke into his Delhi house and were disgusted that there was nothing but books from floor to ceiling in virtually every room.