The leader of the Scottish Conservatives travelled to the war-torn Yugoslavia in 1999 as a junior radio journalist

Ruth Davidson has revealed how the horrors of war in Kosovo, which she experienced as a young reporter, affected her so much they will never leave her.

The leader of the Scottish Conservatives travelled to the war-torn Yugoslavia in 1999 as a junior radio journalist.

She told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival about what she had seen there and what it had been like to confront the true reality of war at the age of 21.

Ms Davidson said: “When I was a very young journalist in Kosovo, I was staying inside the wire, with the armies over there, at the very end of the war.

“The first time I had ever seen the results of something really bad, it was a