As Donald Meek noted in 2013, Thomson took the opportunity ‘to stamp his own vision on Gaelic and on Scotland’, arguing that ‘it is not too much to say that that vision made Gaelic what it is today, with its numerous means of enlightened support, but it also went some way to making Scotland what it is today’, and adding that those engaged in Gaelic revitalisation efforts nowadays are ‘by and large, doing no more than finessing the templates which Derick Thomson and his team created all those years ago’. In 1966, Thomson himself made a list of the most important tasks a writer working in a minoritised language should carry out: ‘to increase the range of writing in that language, to provide a minimum bulk of such writing, to express the ethos of his society but also to interpret the outside world to it, and to satirise it periodically’.

He exerted himself to fulfil these assignments (and many more) and to provide opportunities and encouragement for others to do likewise, and, as this book has tried to illustrate, he succeeded in carrying out much of what he attempted, although some of the initiatives did not always achieve immediate resonance or inspire followers. The tendency of being ahead of his time had the effect that what he proposed during the most active periods of his career was only accomplished decades later, and he did not play an active role in the major developments regarding the provisions for Gaelic in Scotland in the period 1985 to 2012, including the passing of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 and the launch of BBC Alba in 2008.

Had Thomson lived to be a hundred, he would have witnessed some satisfying events and tendencies, in the Gaelic world and in Scotland, and others that would have likely merited some sharp commentary. This short concluding chapter touches on selected developments in the last decade, i.e. the ten years between Thomson's death and the completion of this study, discusses Thomson's legacy and suggests possible directions for future work.