Francehas a "problem with Islam" and there is "too much" unwanted immigration, François Hollande has acknowledged in an explosive new book in which the Socialist president controversially claims that "the veiled woman of today" will tomorrow become France's national icon, Marianne.

Over the course of 61 sit-down interviews and Elysée dinners with two investigative journalists, the French leader issues a string of extraordinarily unguarded comments on everything from Islam, football, "cowardly" judges, Nicolas Sarkozy "the little De Gaulle" and his tangled relationships with women.

Perhaps the most controversial passages are on immigration and Islam, in which Mr Hollande tells authors Gérard David and Fabrice Lhomme: "I there think there are too many arrivals, of immigration that shouldn't be there."

In another blunt comment, Mr Hollande says: "The fact that there is a problem [in France] with Islam is true. Nobody doubts that."

"It's not Islam itself that poses a problem for being a religion that dangerous for the Republic but because it wants to assert itself as a religion inside the French Republic," he tells the authors.