GIFT BOOKS IN BRIEF : ENGLISH VILLAGE PUBS, <i> By Roger Protz, Photos by Homer Sykes (Abbeville: $27.50; 159 pp.)</i>

Time, gentlemen. Time to pick up a copy of “English Village Pubs” and eat your heart out over the dearth of same in these benighted colonies.

Hospitality with a head is what the English pub is all about, and Homer Sykes’ cozy photos are atmospheric enough to make a serious sudser tiddly. (Sykes himself started his 13,000-mile pilgrimage a gin man, but finished a devotee of real ale.)

Real ale , writes Robert Protz, is not the same as common ale, which, of course, is not the same as beer. Real ale completes its maturation in casks on the premises.

Real pubs serve real ale and have done for hundreds of years. Many date from the 15th Century or earlier, and almost all sport low beams, slate floors and resident ghosts (primarily bibulous monks). Served up are legendary local brews like Old Hooky, Christmas Cracker, Amazon, Tolly Cobbold, Old Peculier (sic) and “the dauntingly strong Spingo.”

“In Derbyshire,” he writes, “you can enjoy the market town of Bakewell and its famous tarts.” A little something for everybody here.