What London would look like if Britain's historic spies were crap.

[Valmy]

Adequate housing strikes at the heart of everything it means to be British.

[Agelastus]

If Thomas Cromwell's spies hadn't guided Henry VIII through... well, life, then there might have been no Protestantism, and there never would have been a dissolution of the monasteries.

Which means there would now be monasteries everywhere.

Really, everywhere. Even right in front of the Gherkin.

Just like how in countries like Italy and Poland you cannot go anywhere without stumbling into a monastery?

Curiously enough, assuming the Gherkin got built in whatever alternate history left Catholicism intact in Britain, there would have been a nunnery near it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Helen%27s_Church,_Bishopsgate

One wonders if the article writer was inspired by the picture on that Wikipedia page.

[Razgovory]

Am I supposed to be upset at the idea that London might have a lot of Medieval monasteries?

Yeah, it's like saying, "If the Bolsheviks lost, imagine Russia with more churches and less shitty apartments.  How awful is that!"